A final spatter of arrows clattered on the stones. Conan reached out from the recess to pick them up; they would need every weapon they could command. He had just gripped the last arrow when he heard a barely stifled scream from Vuona, and curses from the men.
Only Govindue seemed in command of himself. "Conan, I think you should see this."
The Cimmerian slipped past a boulder that seemed blackened by fire too hot for earthly flame and stared past the next two boulders. He had judged correctly: a cave lay beyond.
It was no longer shadowy, however. A stark blue witchlight glowed within, brightening even as he watched. Two steps closer and he could see that the light came from niches carved in the walls of the cave, which wound back into the hill out of sight.
Two more steps and the witchlight fell on his skin. He waited to see if any other spell came to life at human presence, or only the light. As he waited, he became aware of a murmur of doubtful voices among the Bamulas.
"Easy," he said without turning around. "This kind of light seldom does harm. If it's meant to, it would already have done so. Would you care to take your chances with the Picts on the open hillside?"
"We've Picts to the front and magick to the rear," Bowenu said dubiously. "How is that better?"
"We can retreat into the cave if the Picts, their arrows, or even their stink, grow too thick!" Conan said, hardening his voice. "One man can hold the mouth of a cave against fifty."
"That is true for the Picts as well," Kubwande said. Conan refrained from cursing him or laying him out with a well-placed fist. Instead, he shrugged.
"Only if we have to come out this way. I've never been in a cave yet that didn't have at least two ways out."
That seemed to soothe most, if not Kubwande. Conan saw no reason to say that the Picts might well know of any other ways out and guard them as well.
Sheltering in the cave might end his band's lives swiftly under the power of the magick there, and would likely only delay their end at the hands of the Picts. But Conan was no man to give any foe an easy death, and time and again, staying alive for moments, even for days, longer had turned the battle.
Seventeen
Scyra was as weary as if she had walked all the day, but she could not sleep”it was not because of her father's snores in the rear of the tent either, nor the reek of the scores of unwashed Picts sleeping upwind of the tent. Some of them were snoring too.
She had taken off no more than her boots, and it was easy to draw them back on silently. She considered bringing along bow and arrows as well as her dagger, but decided to leave them. She was an indifferent archer, and anything that made her look as if she wished to leave the camp might make the warriors suspicious. There were enough with unsettled minds already; she had no wish to see more.
The Owls were growing uneasy as their march took them closer to Snake and Wolf lands. The Snakes barely pretended friendship. The Wolf Picts had not fought the Owls in some years, but if the Owls grew weak from a clash with the Snakes, the Wolves might be at their throats before the snows came.
Five hundred Picts were more than any except a major war chief could keep in order. The only such chief on this march was Sutharo, gone off ahead with his clansmen to ward Conan against the Snakes. Scyra found most of the warriors asleep, a few mounting a desultory guard, and the remainder of those awake crouched around a small fire, chanting quietly. Scyra hoped her father's guard-spells would at least wake him if any danger struck the camp.
She leaned against a tree and listened to the chanting until some of those on the outside of the circle noticed her. One called out a bawdy greeting, others laughed, and someone else asked her to step back that her shadow not fall on them.
She replied by gestures. If they were making war-magick, it was a man's rite. A woman's voice could ruin it as easily as a woman's shadow. As she turned and stepped away from the fire, someone called out his thanks.
She had not learned to love the Picts in the years of her exile in the wilderness. But she realized that she had largely ceased to hate them, after seeing them do all that other folk did. Or perhaps not all”their homeland was harsh, and she missed the sight of fat herds and bulging barns.
But something would be gone from her life when she could not wake to hear the drums and the cries of the hunting bands. Something would be gone from the world, too, when high roads pierced the wilderness, and the Picts who yet lived became docile farmers and shepherds.
Too late, she heard the twigs cracking to her left. She had her dagger drawn and was whirling to thrust into the darkness when a hairy hand buffeted her across the temple. The blow flung her off her feet, striking her head a second blow against a tree. The world was suddenly fire-shot darkness whirling about her.
Another hand, vast, hairy, and inhumanly strong, gripped one ankle.
With her free foot, she kicked savagely, and felt her foot strike rock-hard bone. Pain roared up her leg and burst in her skull like a thunderbolt.
She had lost her grip on her weapon and now scrabbled desperately for it. Her enemies were beyond her power, but she could still turn the dagger against herself. These”they had to be chakans”could be sent by no friend of herself, her father, or Conan. She would not be used”
A hairy foot sank into her stomach. Her head snapped back and struck a root. All her senses failed at once, and she swam down into blackness from which the fire slowly faded until there was only an infinity of nothingness all around her.
***
The Picts seemed to have no taboos about the cave or any fear of its magick. They crept so close that a few well-placed arrows were needed to kill the boldest and discourage the rest.
The Picts' boldness would have discouraged the Bamulus, but Conan urged them to look once more at their hopes rather than at their fears. "It could be that the Picts expect the magick here to end us. They also may expect us to find a way to use it against them, and want to end us first."
At least nobody was ready to call this nonsense to his face. In his own mind, Conan could only hope he was right”or at least that nothing more went amiss to prove him wrong. If the courage of the Bamulas snapped, their last hope would be gone, and only a final stand would remain to the Cimmerian and such as chose to make it with him.
That might be all that remained even now, but Conan remained convinced that every moment a man lived was another he was not dead. Dead, nothing changed; alive, who could say?
Meanwhile, there were wounds to be tended, the scanty food (hard biscuit and salt meat) handed around for a few mouthfuls apiece, and sentries to be posted. Conan wanted them both at the mouth of the cave and a little distance inside it, but did not press the matter. He sensed the unease of the Bamulas at being too far within the cave, and was not quite without unease himself. Also, posting sentries inside the cave would say plainly that he feared attack from there, besides dividing his scanty strength and keeping more men awake.
The sentries had barely taken their places when a hideous uproar of Pictish cries made all hope of sleep impossible. Conan stared out into the darkness, then crawled out, risking an encounter with lurking Picts in the hope of learning what might be going on.
He was ten paces beyond the boulders, all his senses sharpened by sheer willpower, when he sensed movement close to his left. He lay still, unable to judge the others distance by sound. If the Pict was making any, it was lost in the uproar from downhill.
Then, in one moment, the Pict was leaping at Conan, and in the next, another shadow was leaping to meet the first. The Cimmerian rolled out from under the collision of the two Picts and sprang to his feet. He clutched a braid with one hand and a feathered headband with the other and slammed the two heads together. The Picts reeled but continued to struggle.
Conan shifted his grip to their greasy hair, tightened it, and slammed their heads together again.
This time he heard bone crack, and both men went limp in his grip. The Cimmerian dragged them like snared deer back to the boulders, then onw
ard into the light.
The light resolved some of the mystery. One of the Picts bore the war paint, feathers, and tattoos of the Owls. The other, it was equally plain to see, was of the Snakes.
"Lysenius's friends the Owls have come to the hill," Conan said.
"You do not call them our friends," Kubwande said. It was not a question.
If it had been, it was not one Conan would have cared to answer. The best thing that could be said for the Owls coming to fight the Snakes was that by the time the fighting was done, there would be fewer Picts around the hill. Whoever won would be nursing wounds and gathering up dead, while Conan's band regained its strength in what had so far been the safety of the cave.
He wished they had no need to wait. In the confusion of a night battle between two ill-ordered bands, neither of them knowing the ground, a band five times the size of Conan's might slip through”if its captain and men had no scruples about abandoning comrades who could not march.
Four of the men and Vuona were past running, at least tonight. Conan would not lead anyone into certain death, least of all at the hands of Picts. He could not leave them, nor kill them with his own hands while any hope remained. That hope grew scanter by the hour, but it was not gone yet.
Angry with everything”including himself for following Vuona through the demon's gate, and the dawn for not coming sooner”Conan paced the cave like a caged lion. The blue witchlight brought a hue to his eyes that led some of the Bamulas to rites of aversion.
Once he thought he heard the grunting of some unnatural beast out of the dark hillside. Another time he was even more certain he heard running water from within the cave, where all had been silent before.
He almost went in search of it, but saw that Kubwande was wakeful and Govindue and Vuona asleep, not yet in each others arms but with their hands almost touching.
The Cimmerian would not leave that rattlejawed intriguer in command if he had to watch all night. Kubwande could not sell to the Picts anything that they would not buy, but his warcraft did not seem what it had been. Conan had brought his band too far to lose them one moment before fate required it of him!
***
It did not take half the night for Sutharo to count his warriors. It only seemed to. When he had finished counting, he was even less happy than when he had begun.
The Snakes had fought well, as they always did. They also knew the ground better than the Owls did, which had not been so the last three times Sutharo led his warriors against the Snakes. This time he had driven off the Snakes as before, but many Owls were dead or too hurt to fight.
Also, this was Snake land. If even one Snake warrior fled to the chiefs with word of the coming of the Owls, the Snakes would return in strength. Sutharo and his remaining warriors would be caught between the hammer of the fresh Snake warriors and the anvil of the hill above them.
In spite of this, Sutharo had no intention of leaving the hill before Lysenius came, and thus abandoning the foreigners to the Snakes. He was a warrior of the Owls. Also, he was a man to whom a beautiful woman (even if not a Pict) had promised herself, if he kept his promise to her.
He only hoped that he would not lose too many more warriors. Then he might seem unlucky, and he would be much less of a chief by the time he and Scyra were married, or perhaps not even alive at all.
Sutharo was sitting cross-legged on the trunk of a fallen tree when he heard a chakan give its warning cry. The hoots of sentries also came back to him. He rose and walked into the forest, in the direction of the chakan's signal.
There was not one chakan but three, and two of them carried on a litter”
"Scyra?"
It was her, but she did not speak. He saw bruises and smears of blood on her face, and her clothes had been torn in several places.
The remaining chakan stepped forward and reached for Sutharo. The chief drew back, then remembered that shamans used these beasts not only to track enemies, but to bear messages. He forced himself to stand waiting while the chakan rested a bristle-haired palm on his forehead.
A message flowed into Sutharo's mind, placed in the chakan by Vurag Yan, chief shaman of the Owls, and carried across the wilderness in such a way that Lysenius could not learn it. Yan seemed angry, and as he listened, Sutharo understood why, and even came to share that anger.
The white shamans, father and daughter alike, were abandoning the Picts. There would be no blood-sacrifice of the Cimmerian Conan and the demon-men, nor even of one of the Picts, to bring the statue to invincible life. Scyra intended that she and her father should flee, deserting the Picts, leaving the Owls at war with the Snakes as well as with the demon-men.
The demon-men were few, but they might have powers Sutharo did not know of, and he did know that the Cimmerian was even more formidable than most of his folk.
. "So what is your command, Vurag Yan?" Sutharo asked. He did not know if the chakan could send a message to the shaman as well as bear one from him, but he thought it best to discover that for himself.
After a moment, a reply passed through the chakan into Sutharo's mind: "See that the blood-sacrifice is Conan and his band. With enough of such strong blood, even I can bring the statue to life and command it!."
It was the first hint of modesty that Sutharo had ever heard in the shaman. He resisted laughter. He also considered the wisdom of bargaining, and decided that it was necessary, if not wise.
"Scyra remains with me."
"You still wish to wed her? Your sons will have tainted
"I will have more sons of purer blood than you ever will, you old woodsrat! I wish to command her father and Conan through holding her.
Much they might do against me could put her in danger, as long as I hold her. Or can you protect me against Lysenius, Conan, and the Snakes all at once?"
"You are defiant and disobedient, Sutharo."
"I lead the warriors who are here now, and whom you will need to finish your work. You need me as much as I need you, Vurag Yan."
The chakan moaned in outright pain; apparently the shaman's wrath at this reply hurt. Sutharo waited, but the night returned to silence, both within his mind and outside his body.
He looked up the hill. It would not be an easy matter, breaking into the cave against the Cimmerian and the demon-men. It would cost warriors' lives. Sutharo hoped it would not cost so many that the Snakes came and finished off those left before Vurag Yan or the warriors left behind could help him.
If it could be done, though¦ the praise-songs would be without end for the warrior who gave the Picts vengeance for their wrongs, and raised the Owls to the highest place among all the folk of the wilderness.
Vurag Yan would no doubt try to seize all the glory himself, but there would be enough who knew about Sutharo to give him his share, too many for the shaman to silence.
He sent messengers to summon his underchiefs. They had best move swiftly, before the enemy had time to regain strength, or worse, to summon any magick from within the cave.
***
The captured Snake Pict was dead when Conan dragged him into the cave mouth. The Owl Pict was senseless and never awoke enough to speak.
Before long, he too died. The Bamulas began to mutter among themselves, fearing the spirits of the dead might walk if the Picts' bodies remained among them.
After all that the band had survived on its journey thus far, Conan thought Pictish ghosts were hardly worth a child's concern. He did not say so, however. Instead, he nodded.
"Let us take them far back into the cave, so its magick will bind the ghosts."
"What if it makes them stronger?" Kubwande asked. To do him justice, he now seemed less calculating than half witless from fear. Conan did not altogether find fault in that”here they were close to treading on the shadows of the gods, or even of less friendly beings¦ as Conan had sworn to Belit he would not do.
But what a man did for himself was one thing, and what he was ready to do for those who had followed him so far and so bravely was another
.
"If the magick of the cave was our enemy, it would have struck us down by now. It cannot be a friend to Pictish ghosts. But if you wish, someone can come with me to perform the Bamula spirit-binding on these Picts. It should at least give their spirits too much of a headache for them to come bothering us."
It was Bowenu who stepped forward, even before Govindue, about the last man Conan had expected to volunteer. This was as well. The two lesser chiefs could watch each other, and Bowenu could hardly be a danger to him. Each of the two lifted a body and set out down the tunnel into the hill.
The corridor ran level for some distance, perhaps fifty paces. Then it sloped gently downward, widening as it did. Conan thought he saw weathered reliefs of serpentine shapes on the walls, like decorations in a temple of Set, but not quite the same. Or mayhap they were just natural patterns in the rock and he was seeing what was not there. Too much magick and not enough wine for too long could set a man's fancies in a whirl.
At last they rounded a corner and reached a point where the tunnel both widened and rose into a domed chamber. The rock of the walls, a grayish-purple under the witchlight, was too smooth to be wholly natural, but quite undecorated. Dust lay thick, except for a circle about a spear-length wide in the middle of the chamber, which might have been swept and sponged only moments before.
In the middle of the circle rose a statue. If it was life-size, its subject had been taller and broader even than the giant Cimmerian. It also seemed to have just been thoroughly and lovingly cleaned, and Conan saw a faint pattern of scales on the skin.
There was something vaguely reptilian about the eyes, and memory chilled Conan. Was this one of the legendary serpent-men of Valusia? So ancient they had fought with the Atlanteans, they had been gone even before the long-dead Empire of Acheron rose to wreak its black havoc.
The Conan Compendium Page 420